[1.2] Pirates of the Keribbean v0.2 [29.10.2016]

[GagaX]

 

Pirates of the Keribbean v0.2

Where there is space there are space pirates.

This is a fun mod, it adds parts for creating pirate spaceships. So far, there are only dozen or so parts, enough to create simple spaceplanes and rockets. 

Pirates have unique high-tech (magic) propulsion system, so they never run out of fuel (always active fuel generator).

So raise your black flags and off to explore Kerbol system. 

Instalation:

1. extract PoK.zip to GameData folder

2. have fun!

Legal stuff:

Pirates of the Keribbean by GagaX is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

Edited October 29, 2016 by GagaX

[linuxgurugamer]

Cool!

Now, how to create a contract pack which involves pirates?

Edited August 17, 2016 by linuxgurugamer

[Stone Blue]

6 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Now, how to create a contract pack which involves pirates?

Hah!... I immediately though the same exact thing while reading the OP... lol

[Torgo]

Just call them letters of marque and you're all set. 

Edited August 17, 2016 by Torgo

[linuxgurugamer]

27 minutes ago, Torgo said:

Just call them letters of marque and you're all set. 

It's not a matter of what to call them, it's what sort of contracts to generate which would fit the idea of pirates.

[Torgo]

13 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

It's not a matter of what to call them, it's what sort of contracts to generate which would fit the idea of pirates.

Like rescue or recover contracts, but now it's capture and return.

A spacecraft is entering kerbin orbit carrying ______. Intercept this craft, capture the crew, return it (or dock and transfer cargo) to base. 

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, Torgo said:

Like rescue or recover contracts, but now it's capture and return.

A spacecraft is entering kerbin orbit carrying ______. Intercept this craft, capture the crew, return it (or dock and transfer cargo) to base. 

I see that there is a pirate cockpit, ARR-01, I suppose the contract can require that part, and then I can see the following types of contracts:

Using the PoK agency

Capture crew of ship and return to kerbin

Dock & transfer cargo to station

Dock & transfer cargo to base

Intercept & destroy a ship

Establish a pirate base, must have a part (PoK fuselage, PoK_CP, PoK Flag)

 

And yes, I'm thinking about writing it

Other suggestions would be useful.  These shouldn't take too long to do

[DStaal]

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I see that there is a pirate cockpit, ARR-01, I suppose the contract can require that part, and then I can see the following types of contracts:

Using the PoK agency

Capture crew of ship and return to kerbin

Dock & transfer cargo to station

Dock & transfer cargo to base

Intercept & destroy a ship

Establish a pirate base, must have a part (PoK fuselage, PoK_CP, PoK Flag)

 

And yes, I'm thinking about writing it

Other suggestions would be useful.  These shouldn't take too long to do

Is it possible in KSP to do 'dock out of line-of-sight from ____'?  (Kerbin, a specific base/station, etc.)

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, DStaal said:

Is it possible in KSP to do 'dock out of line-of-sight from ____'?  (Kerbin, a specific base/station, etc.)

That would be Contractconfigurator, and I don't think so.

[cxg2827]

I like this mod idea enough that I might add some PoK parts to my To-Do list 

 

[linuxgurugamer]

Isn't there a part somewhere like a harpoon, which you can use to "harpoon" a craft?  

[Torgo]

2 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Isn't there a part somewhere like a harpoon, which you can use to "harpoon" a craft?  

Think it's a KIS thing. Could also use the Electromagnet, too, if the agency paying you doesn't want the craft damaged. 

Could also add capture and return a ship (either via re-entry or in a cargo bay) contract.

This could be a lot of fun. Would be very cool if the orbit of the target could be hidden, so you have to find it first, then figure out how to get to it. Have some ships easier to find than others.. from knowing thew full flight plan (easy), a broadcasting transponder (medium... can find it but have to track it), to a ship running silent (need some sort of radar to try to detect it, hard).

An added bonus would be if the ship could try to escape you, but that may be beyond the reach of modding. 

[linuxgurugamer]

16 hours ago, Torgo said:

Think it's a KIS thing. Could also use the Electromagnet, too, if the agency paying you doesn't want the craft damaged. 

Could also add capture and return a ship (either via re-entry or in a cargo bay) contract.

This could be a lot of fun. Would be very cool if the orbit of the target could be hidden, so you have to find it first, then figure out how to get to it. Have some ships easier to find than others.. from knowing thew full flight plan (easy), a broadcasting transponder (medium... can find it but have to track it), to a ship running silent (need some sort of radar to try to detect it, hard).

An added bonus would be if the ship could try to escape you, but that may be beyond the reach of modding. 

I'm not sure if the target orbit can be hidden.  Would need to write some significant code to do that, and create some parts (transponder, radar) to support it

[DStaal]

20 hours ago, Torgo said:

Think it's a KIS thing. Could also use the Electromagnet, too, if the agency paying you doesn't want the craft damaged. 

Could also add capture and return a ship (either via re-entry or in a cargo bay) contract.

This could be a lot of fun. Would be very cool if the orbit of the target could be hidden, so you have to find it first, then figure out how to get to it. Have some ships easier to find than others.. from knowing thew full flight plan (easy), a broadcasting transponder (medium... can find it but have to track it), to a ship running silent (need some sort of radar to try to detect it, hard).

An added bonus would be if the ship could try to escape you, but that may be beyond the reach of modding. 

Unfortunately, that's actually very unrealistic: 'There ain't no stealth in space'  Basically, it's trivially easy to spot anything that fires off any form of propulsion system, and not much harder to detect anything that's running such high-heat items as computers or life support.  Essentially stealth is 'hiding among the background noise' - and the background noise in space is about 2.725K.  If you're significantly warmer than that, you'll be easy to spot.

More realistic would be to dock with one particular ship in a fleet - and have the rest of the fleet scatter (or just disappear...) if you dock with any of them.  An easy version would be you know which particular ship it is, medium would be you know what type of ship it is in a mixed fleet, hard being you have to scan for some id marker.  (If that last is possible.)

[linuxgurugamer]

6 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Unfortunately, that's actually very unrealistic: 'There ain't no stealth in space'  Basically, it's trivially easy to spot anything that fires off any form of propulsion system, and not much harder to detect anything that's running such high-heat items as computers or life support.  Essentially stealth is 'hiding among the background noise' - and the background noise in space is about 2.725K.  If you're significantly warmer than that, you'll be easy to spot.

More realistic would be to dock with one particular ship in a fleet - and have the rest of the fleet scatter (or just disappear...) if you dock with any of them.  An easy version would be you know which particular ship it is, medium would be you know what type of ship it is in a mixed fleet, hard being you have to scan for some id marker.  (If that last is possible.)

If it was "trivially easy" to spot anything, then why is it so hard to find near-earth asteroids?

There can be lots of ways to hide in space.  Stealth systems, ultra-absorbative coatings, etc.  And just the fact that space is very large, and a ship is very small. lots of space (no pun intended) to cover

Edited August 18, 2016 by linuxgurugamer

[linuxgurugamer]

23 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

If it was "trivially easy" to spot anything, then why is it so hard to find near-earth asteroids?

There can be lots of ways to hide in space.  Stealth systems, ultra-absorbative coatings, etc.  And just the fact that space is very large, and a ship is very small. lots of space (no pun intended) to cover

I read the article referenced.  Very interesting, but it is assuming a highly advanced set of sensors & computers.  KSP is not that advanced, so all the arguments which need high tech can be discounted.  Think of sensors back in the 50's and 60's, rather than today

[DStaal]

7 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I read the article referenced.  Very interesting, but it is assuming a highly advanced set of sensors & computers.  KSP is not that advanced, so all the arguments which need high tech can be discounted.  Think of sensors back in the 50's and 60's, rather than today

The start of the KSP tech tree is 50's/60's tech, yes.  The end of it is at least current tech in stock.  By the time a 'pirate a ship' contract comes out, (or 'defend against pirates'), you should be near at least current tech, and a scan of the system for ships can be done in under a Kerbal day with late-90's consumer-level tech.  (Minus the optics - but even there it's not that it's hard, it's just that the average consumer has no use for them, so they aren't consumer-tech.)

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

If it was "trivially easy" to spot anything, then why is it so hard to find near-earth asteroids?

There can be lots of ways to hide in space.  Stealth systems, ultra-absorbative coatings, etc.  And just the fact that space is very large, and a ship is very small. lots of space (no pun intended) to cover

Near-earth asteriods don't maneuver (which is going to light up a nice big beacon saying 'here I am' - which is why I called that trivially easy).  The main issue with near-earth asteroids is just political willpower/funding: It's a low priority, and it doesn't get the resources it needs - which at the moment is to work out the tracks of everything in the solar system.  (Because we can't say something isn't a near-earth asteroid at some point in it's future until we've worked out it's orbit.)  Oh, which brings up the next point: For near-earth asteroids, we need to calculate their orbits for several decades in advance, including all things that could perturb them.  Which also means we need to see where they are now even though they aren't necessarily anywhere near us now.  (See below.)

Plotting a ship's current trajectory is several orders of magnitude easier: You need it's position, mass, and velocity.  If you spotted it's exhaust plume, you have all of that already.  If they were clever enough to keep you from spotting that, it's going to take you a couple of minutes of work with a telescope.

I'll leave the article to cover why stealth systems or ultra-absorptive coatings don't work, except to say that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are a poodle.

But to back up a moment, the main problem really is that if you're going to run a pirate ship you need the ability to navigate yourself.  If you can do that fairly safely without a government-level budget you need to be able to track asteroids (AKA: hazards to your ship) on your own path without outside help, using an affordable piece of gear.  If that gear exists, a government can afford to deploy it in multiples, which is easily enough to defeat any reasonable space-stealth regime.

Now, I am willing to concede that sensors on Kerbol might not be able to track a ship trying to keep from being observed around Jool very well - distance does play a factor.  The site I linked to gives an equation for detection ranges - and an example of a decent-sized space ship gives a detection range of about 40,000,000km.  So if they were being careful, they might be able to hide even around Duna for a while.  But if we assume there's something to pirate out there, it's likely going to be another ship or a base - which should have it's own sensors, feeding back to the KSC.

[GagaX]

 

It's been a while, I've been busy with other things, but here it is, finally: v0.2. Enjoy!

[Jiraiyah]

@GagaX

Sir I beg you for one simple change, change the color of parts from being that much dark black, even in vab no details are really visible, why why why? I want to cry :/

[Ruedii]

On 8/17/2016 at 0:58 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Cool!

Now, how to create a contract pack which involves pirates?

Well, since most Space Outlaw TV series are under totalitarian governments that consider unlicensed salvage to be piracy, I suspect salvage operations.

[Turf]

Got a particle generator in career mode.

I thought it only generates very-cheap Fluktons.

I realized that it also generates very-expensive Antifluktons....

I'm rich!!! And also infinite fuel for our interstellar needs!

On 8/17/2016 at 11:54 PM, GagaX said:

Pirates have unique high-tech (magic) propulsion system, so they never run out of fuel (always active fuel generator).

All of that above unlocked before even reaching orbit.

Oh, what mod that adds the contract specifically designed for this mod?

[mindseyemodels]

update required

[TheRagingIrishman]

6 minutes ago, mindseyemodels said:

update required

this is a pure parts pack so it should be fine without an update

Also, please don't go to 10 threads and say "update required". Us modders work for free because we enjoy it and we are nice enough to share our work with everyone. Saying something as rude as "update required" can and has made people quit kill their mods/quit modding completely. I get that you want your mods to be updated but you're doing it the wrong way. Take a minute or two, read the thread, see if the modder is still around, and then say something like "Hey I really love this mod, are you planning to update it to the newest ksp version?"

 

[David24]

Will this mod re feature on Ckan I miss it and can not see it listed anymore

[DiamondHawk427]

I translated fer all ye pirates out thar:

"Where thar be space thar are space pirates.

'tis a fun mod, it adds parts fer creatin' pirate spaceships. So far, thar are only dozen or so parts, enough t' create simple spaceplanes 'n rockets. 

Pirates 'ave unique high-tech (magic) propulsion system, so they ne'er run out o' fuel (always active fuel generator).

So raise yer black flags 'n off t' explore Kerbol system."